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Yes, other than the South. It isn't gone yet, but is gradually fading into one American accent.
Including the South, in my opinion. Not for black people necessarily, but for everyone else.
Even in Appalachia it seems like the accent gets watered down with each passing generation. I was watching a video about Kentucky BBQ and the grandpa had a thick Appalachian accent, the dad had a moderate one, and the son's was just vaguely Southern tinged.
Yes. I think in most cities black folks spend more time outside interacting organically in their neighborhoods, urban black accent stick pretty hard. I’d guess black folks are less likely to move from state to state but rather move within a region.
Also northern black speech and southern black speech is a deeper divide than accents. It grammar, word use (slang), tense. Much of black Northern speech uses similar grammar or tense but very different forms of respect, general word use and it’s just a very different dialect overall.
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 06-18-2019 at 07:42 AM..
I was raised in the city of Boston and am black. Only older blacks folks have the accent 50+. Boston is just too international with too many transplants to have the accent anymore. You rarely ever hear it. Some kids who were born in Boston and move to towns like Everett revere Malden brockton, Abington, Stoughton, Saugus etc (working class cities/towns) have the accent. But Irish folks are only about 12% of Boston proper so the group who the accent is most affiliated with just doesn’t have the numbers anymore. Accent is strong in Rhode Island though. But again, lots of immigrants and their kids and they simply don’t have the accent.
Good examplles in my family:
My mom was raised in Roxbury (Bostons Black Center) in the 60s/70s and has a noticebable scent. She lives in Woonsocket, RI now due to gentrification. She probablly picked up the accent in HS when she first went to school with white folks and was really around white folks for the first time in her life. My aunt Is Cape Verdean from Dorchester and has a THICK Boston accent. She lives in Avon, MA 20 miles south of Bosto due to gentrification. My uncle has the accent and still lives in Dorchester. He went to a black high school that bussed white kids in from South Boston. My other aunt only went to all black schools throughout her education and this has virtually no accent. All of them are 50+ years old.
None of my brother or cousin has even a trace of an accent.
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 06-18-2019 at 07:36 AM..
I hear it still when I’m in RI. Last time I was in Mass I was in Cape code and it seems kinda spotty there. Some youngsters have a strong accent(usually girls for some reason) whilst some have only a small trace of it.
I hear it still when I’m in RI. Last time I was in Mass I was in Cape code and it seems kinda spotty there. Some youngsters have a strong accent(usually girls for some reason) whilst some have only a small trace of it.
Cape cod is a mix of moderate income with no wealth or moderate incomes with wealth . Those without wealth have accents and those with it usually don’t.
RI doesn’t have much wealth and has much stronger accents than Boston or MA.
You actually do sound perceptibly New York to me. You pronounce the r's at the end of words, but some of your vowels still sound distinct.
I agree. I'm on the West Coast and have a linguistics background, and I can hear that your vowels in words like "walk," "only," and "photograph" are more tense and rounded than they would be pronounced here. Is it a strong stereotypical New York accent, not at all, but I think many Californians would recognize quickly that "you're not from here" and could place your accent in the Northeast, even if they couldn't say for sure if it is New York or Boston or what, exactly.
I agree. Aside from rural southern areas southern accents are fading away at a very rapid rate. Seems to me that most of the people living in cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville aren't even from those areas but are transplants.
While some traits of local accents might be subsiding in cities like Boston, NYC, and Philly, there are definitely accents still to be found in the young generations. I've met countless white Irish and Italian people born and raised in outer parts of Queens, outer parts of Brooklyn, Staten Island, and all over North Jersey with obvious NYC/NJ accents. The slightest accents still have the flat "a" sound in a name like "Karen" or a word like "married." The rounded "a" on words like "call" and "talk" is a bit less common, but very noticeable still. The rounded "ou" sounds in "thought" and "taught" and "caught" still exist to varying degrees. Those are just the few examples. Yes, it varies between the people I know. Some have the flat "a" and sound just a little bit different when saying "thought" or "call," but others I know sound just like the stereotype still. Some are more highly educated than others, but the accents still exists for sure at all levels of education. But yes, the less educated whites generally do have the stronger accents still. I mean look at someone like Angelina from Jersey Shore. She's far less classy and educated than Vinny, and they grew up very close to each other, but her accent is much stronger than his. He still has a very obvious accent to someone who knows the accent though. Watch any Staten Island or New Jersey reality show and the younger generation still has very obvious accents.
As for Philly, it's had less of an influx of transplants than NYC, so the accent has been retained much more IMO. I have friends from the Main Line who have a very slight accents, but those from the North and Northeast burbs as well as South Jersey seem to have the stronger accents. Examples are nearly everyone drinks "wooder" and they'll tell you to "call meh when you get hewme." If you know the Philly accent, you know how "me" is pronounced with the flat "e" sound trailing off and the strange "o" sound in "home." You'll hear that accent all over Philly still at all levels of society and education more strongly than a NYC accent in NYC...IMO.
I have less first-hand experience with the Boston accents, but when I visit, I still notice them. My cousin from there is highly educated and from a highly educated wealthy family, but she still has some of the accent. A good friend from there actually has no accent at all, though, which is not my experience with anyone from NJ/NYC/LI. Westchester seems to have lost their accent more than the rest of the region it seems, and she's from a Westchester-style equivalent of Boston suburbs.
A lot of people born and raised in NYC who still live here and have lots of friends from here truly don't realize they have an accent or their friends do. However slight it might be, people not from the area can recognize it even if the speaker can't. So, Foamposite, I'm not saying you're wrong, but you can't hear it on yourself or the people you encounter regularly that well. There is a slight accent in your recording that you may not hear that others can. Similarly, there are some words I don't realize I say differently because it's normal to me and I work with all people born and raised in NJ/NY. But my mom has a NY accent so I developed some of it without even knowing. To people not from this area, I have an accent. To people from here, I don't because it's too slight for them to notice compared to other people.
Overall, the extreme accents may be fading, but I doubt they'll ever cease to exist. Philly will always drink wooder and NYC will always " cawl to tawk about their thawts on mahrriage," but some of the more extreme examples will fade away some. Never entirely though IMO.
I noticed that to me at least, distinct accents in the US are not that much of a thing.
I'm a native New Yorker, and nobody here talks like Andrew Dice Clay besides older, white, non-immigrant blue collar people. Even my Irish-American grandfather who was a cab driver and born in the 40s, never spoke with a stereotypical sounding New York accent unless it was tongue in cheek. Most white people have a generic American accent and most black people have the black Northeastern accent that is shared with North Jersey and New England. There are some small differences (regarding the former), such as us pronouncing coffee like "coffee", but other than that I hardly think we sound much different from Midwesterners or West Coast people. I'll post a recording of my voice later if anyone is interested.
Whenever I meet white people from the South, they almost never have Southern sounding accents unless they're from rural areas. Every white person I meet from the urban South has more of a generic American sounding accent.
Black people do seem to have regional accents still (black people from the Northeast sound much different from the South), however that may be fading too.
The NY accent is disappearing largely b/c of how many people from other places live here. There really is a very small % of actual 'native New Yorkers' when you look @ NYC as a whole. I think places like LI still have a distinct accent, but the notion of the 'New York Accent' has certainly gone by the wayside.
The NY accent is disappearing largely b/c of how many people from other places live here. There really is a very small % of actual 'native New Yorkers' when you look @ NYC as a whole. I think places like LI still have a distinct accent, but the notion of the 'New York Accent' has certainly gone by the wayside.
Even many Native New Yorkers have parents from other states or countries.
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